Today I posted the below to my FB page and it set me thinking about you and your FB page set up. Lucky you. On contemplating the issue of the dumbing down of America which appears to be so front and center at this time in history, I must firmly believe that your FB page set up contributed greatly to this state of affairs. The fact that you only put a LIKE button to posts and force fed this choice into the conscience of millions and millions of users for years has rendered most of us with the inability to NOT LIKE something. It has become such a horrible thing to say ‘This Sucks’ for the older generation. The youth though has no problem with it yet simply because they ARE youth and don’t really hang on your page anyway. Why on earth is it considered so impolite, so horrible to simple state what you think about something. The discernment required to evaluate whether music or art or literature or just the guy talking to you at the moment is a horror show needs to be brought back. It won’t kill us to not be patted on the back for every single thing we do. There is a centuries old argument between the Romantics and the Greeks and set forth beautifully in Le Misenthrope- yes it’s book and yes you can Kindle the damn thing. The Romantics believed in kindness above truth, the Greek truth above kindness at all times. Well you Mr. Zuckerberg have effectively taken away the choice to be a Greek at all on your FB page. While this may not seem a huge thing on the surface, it is really. I personally am sick to death of liking stuff. I just don’t. Plain and simple. Being nice ALL the time is also overrated. Sometimes it takes more than that to get something done. In any event, I say YOU, Mr. Zuckerberg should personally contribute to the restoration of the ability to discern at least by your FB users. I want a BUNCH of buttons and I want every person who reads a post to have to THINK about what they are reading or looking at (other than cat pictures- just leave that alone please- that would be too much all at once.) So let’s see a LIKE, REALLY LIKE, SUCKS, LOVE IT, REALLY SUCKS, DONT REALLY CARE ABOUT THE TOPIC, I NEED TO RESEARCH THIS A BIT and I’M BACK AND I RESEARCHED IT (here then you get a second chance of the above buttons to push) button. If we are going to now live our lives here at least let’s engage our brains and raise the national IQ above that of a Duck Kardashian Dynasty fan. Thank you for reading and the ability to do so.

Love,

Maddie

RETRACTION: I am no longer interested in pissing off anyone, no matter how much fun it is. My mission should I decide to accept it, between now and November is to analyze some issues, make the arguments and try and bring back a bit of discernment and critical thinking and show how we are NOT as far apart on many issues as the media and Mr. Zuckerberg would like us to believe. I truly believe we can form the party of Common Sense in the future and these ridiculously rigid positions could disappear easily. For starters I have met a cool lady yesterday who owns a T shirt shop and I ordered the one she was wearing: Don’t Believe Everything You Think. Visit her website and FB page, it’s a company called BeSoDoSo. Because everything in America starts with a great T-shirt. Sandi Behar- get the Rock n Roll is Constitutional one. You’ve go the arms for it, baby!

Original FB post
Good Morning folks, today’s let’s piss off a Republic post will have to do with actually finding one in this year’s election. Despite Michael Moore’s doomsday prediction, I can’t seem to find anyone to actually say they are voting for The Donald, come on let’s use his old name please. I get a lot of ‘NO WAY I’M VOTING FOR HILARY but no actual I’M VOTING FOR TRUMP AND PROUD OF IT. So either you are voting for him and too embarrassed to say so OR you really have no one else to vote for. Well WRITE MY NAME IN !! There you go problem solved. Now my perspective like those who work UNDER these presidential administrations (I have 8 of them by the way under by belt) is different than the rest of you. We don’t work FOR them remember, we work UNDER them. We are not political appointees. We are career bureaucrats that can tie their silly ass policies up in knots for years if we think they are an idiot and the people they put in charge of us are even bigger idiots. Anyway someday I will write my perspective about all 8 of them. Not today. Today I want to just say thank you to Hilary for letting me stay home part time and take care of my kids when she was president the first time. Come on folks, balls of steel broad with the nicest guy ever for a husband. You do the “who’s in charge here” math. But in all fairness I also want to thank George W for allowing us to keep for our own personal use any frequent flier mileage we accrued on government travel. That was UNHEARD before him. I still have that order somewhere and it was literally one of the first memos we got in January 2001. Needless to say, I put my red pen down and sat quietly for the next four years. I hope both these issues are part of the questions they ask during the presidential debates this fall.

Like this:

Commencement commences tonight with the kick off of my younger son’s 8th grade dance and my wonderful borrowed ‘daughter’ Alexa’s high school graduation followed by my amazing niece Gabriella’s high school graduation on Friday in New York. How the distance hurts when there are family milestones to miss. I tell my kids I will always do them a favor and live very close to them wherever they go. Yes, doesn’t sound very appealing to them right now but I have learned how important that is after having spent a lifetime away from mine.

Some memories from this week as my blog is time lapsed. At Max’s dance a young man that he has been in class with since kindergarten got up in front of the whole class at the dance and sang an amazing rendition of the old ditty Come and Get Your Love. When they were in kindergarten together Max used to come home and ask me why this boy didn’t speak or look at him or couldn’t go out on the playground and play. It was a difficult conversation to explain autism to a 5 year old. I did the best I could at the time. In second grade, the school initiated a program whereby they asked peers to spend their lunchtime a few days a week in a classroom playing board games with special needs kids who were not quite ready for the school yard experience. Max was chosen and he did it. All the A’s in grades could not make me prouder than I was of him for being chosen and more important his acceptance of it.

The night of graduation, Max decided to throw himself a little party of some 20 odd kids at the last minute. He came in to the living room and as excited as could be told me Kennedy can actually come to the party, his parents are letting him. This is the little boy who Max couldn’t understand why he couldn’t fully play with him all those years ago. This was the little boy that Max played with at lunchtime in the classroom in second grade. This was the same young man who got up and sang his heart out at the dance the night before. And this was the same young man who smiled and gave me a big hug thank you on this way out of my house the other night. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful and great it was to see how this young man blossomed and flourished in these past 9 years. He will be going to high school with Max and there is a lot more good years to come I’m sure for him.

Another thing happened at the end of the dance as I was busy helping kids to leave with the proper parent, not that any sane adult would want to take an 8th grader home with them that they weren’t legally obligated to. Max and Onate and Josh were off to the side waiting for me and all of sudden sobbing the likes of which you usually hear at the open grave of an Italian funeral came from their direction as Principal Susie was making a futile attempt at consolation. Onate has been Max’s friend since just about kindergarten, despite my best efforts. These boys are so close and Onate is moving away after school ends and the knowledge of that overwhelmed all three of them plus two other nearby girls as common tears will do. Usually if my sons cry their eyes out it would upset me so and I would want to fix the source or eliminate it altogether. Not this time. I was proud that my son could show that much emotion and heartache over losing a friend. My kids, like me, are not the most emotionally demonstrative human beings on the planet. It showed me this week just what kind of young man I am putting out into this world. Max is the most stubborn, argumentative, my way or the high way, unparentable child I have ever seen. Well some say my mother saw one as well. But I will take that bad with the good I saw in my son’s heart this week any day.

Whether it’s a bridge to high school, college or to life, these events mark the passages of time from childhood to adult. My older one is in a gap year. It hasn’t been easy for either one of us really. If that gap turns into a chasm however we’ll need to talk. When he mentions college, well I was very excited about it a year ago but now not so much since I spent his college money on concerts and plays.

Such an emotional week it was of course as the huge gap of our lost AJ looms largest with the firsts of all the missing events throughout this year. This week especially brought tears and joy. The joy comes from discovering so much amazing music this week by Paul McCartney. What can I say, music in my life is a priority these days. I need a soundtrack just to brush my teeth. The song I chose to send Alexa this morning for her graduation as it brought tears yesterday upon first hearing it but so reminded me of the commencing kids this week is Hope for the Future. I found out later it was written by Sir Paul for the video game Destiny. It warmed my heart to be led to this song, as no one was more of gamer when young than her brother.

This week brings the near end to the fours of everything we shared with our neighbors and friends raising our four children: four Lincoln 5th grade promotion Fun Days, four Casimir 8th grade promotion dances, four 8th grade Casimir graduations, three North High graduation ceremonies and three North High grad nights. There is one North High graduation and grad night left now to complete the mandatory portion of the path to their futures.

What it holds for the remaining three past that portion remains to be seen. We can only trust that we have given the world some decent people. As a parent I don’t think I can ask for more than that. I have no aspiration for my kids to be rich or famous or infamous. I don’t strive for perfection in them either. O that ship has sailed. I want my sons discerning and honest and happy and joyful and putting some good into the world. That’s all I can hope for. Congratulations Max, Alexa and Gabriella. And Marco? Well Happy End of Gap Year, Gap.

Share this:

Like this:

This is a test to see if this blog actually works. After I all I just spent two hours on the phone with this lovely company trying to set up this blog. If this is the easiest one to use, I can’t even imagine the hard ones. As I told the lovely lady Kristen S. at the other end of the chat help line, “I am retarded when it comes to this stuff” And yet she still stayed to help me. I did suggest that WordPress really should allow their customer service reps to take control of the computer like Apple rather than write me copious notes in a box that I then have to translate to actionable items that if I had a clue how to execute I wouldnt have had to chat with them in the first place. Apparently they are not there yet. In any event here we go. Yes I have way too much time on my hands and hands on my time as you will see. For now though off to a PTA Association meeting if I can get Kirsten to stop saying good bye to me in 42 different ways in that damn chat box. OH NO! Did they really just say they are going to send a transcript of the chat box to my email. And the purpose would be so I can keep for a posterity a record of how clueless I am when it comes to technology? Well there goes another two hours of my life I won’t ever get back..